At 9:18 AM -0600 12/4/06, James Waddick wrote:
> I am inclined to say the basic reason is greed - too much
>work and not enough profit. But there used to be lots of folks
>willing to do this before.
**Oh dear, I had to reply to this.
We owned a specialty storefront (non-nursery) for 10 years after I
injured my back. We were hoping we could augment our income; I was on
disability and my husband, an ed psych was burning out.
Greed?
I was open 7 days a week, 10 am to 5 pm, and then I went home, ate
dinner and spent the rest of the evening selling on the internet,
eBay, and taking care of mail orders until close to midnight. Our
rent (this was over 10 years ago) was $2,000/month, not including
utilities (electric alone was $200-$300/month), telephone, fax,
internet server, computer maintenance, advertising costs, shipping
costs (it does cost $ to have UPS make daily pickups), etc .
You have to have capital to buy suppies/merchandise.
Telos isn't even a mom & pop. Diana runs it alone, a mom business.
Her work is overwhelming. Watering, collecting seed, harvesting
bulbs, shipping, printing and mailing catalogs, maintaining an
internet website, cleaning, spraying, fertilizing, advertising,
answering email and answering more email along with the demands of
customers.
Whew!
When "there used to be lots of folks willing to do this", times were
vastly different. Mom-pop businesses were not competing with
world-wide businesses on the internet far larger than a single
enterprise. In the past, every area did not have big-box stores who
buy in bulk and can offer discount pricing. (I had a customer make an
email inquiry asking if I could get an item he saw in WalMart, and
when I tried to explain why I couldn't, he told me we were probably
snooty and he couldn't afford us anyway.)
Many mom/pop stores/businesses relied on family to help run the
store/business. My children all have to work to support their own
families. I couldn't pay them a living wage even if they had lived in
the area; many wives/mothers now have to work, so they aren't free to
help with family businesses.
We had to eventually hire help. Once you employ staff, you have
workers comp to pay, and I had to hire an accountant to help with all
the paperwork involved with having employees. Employees come and go
quickly because small businesses (and we paid higher than most) can't
afford to offer medical/dental benefits, paid vacations, and most
people can't live on the wages paid.
We constantly fed the business, money went back in, and business are
hungry beasts.
Rents and land costs are now exorbitantly high. In the old days often
family, and extended family, lived on the property. In CA, and we
live in a depressed area in NorCal, acreage, when you can find it,
runs $100,000 an acre and that's often without a house. Property
taxes are high. And there is always natural disaster to contend with.
We had a flood our second year open. We got a small loan, but
anything above $10,000, we would have had to use our house as
collateral. Considering we'd lost $30,000 worth of merchandise and
suffered from lack of walk-ins (except those who wanted to look at
the damage) for months, it took us a long time to get back on our
feet.
I have to agree with points made by both Ellen and Diana and Ken.
Helping people in India would be dandy. Helping locals from our own
areas would even be dandier.
JMHO.
s.
--
susan hayek, North Coast of CA, USA, zone 9b, Sunset zone 17.
15 miles south of Eureka, CA, overlooking the Eel River, with a peek
of the ocean.